Wow! 113 never-before-released recordings of the great American accordionist Charles Magnante playing with his quartet. These are very rare recordings; they were not released commercially for the general record-buying public, but were instead sent to radio stations for airplay. These priceless recordings were acquired over many decades of persistent and patience searching by an avid accordion aficionado and a great fan of Magnante.

About this 5-CD set: Charles Magnante (1905-1986) was an American piano-accordionist, arranger, composer, author and educator. His artistry helped raise the image of the accordion from an instrument considered suitable only for folk music to an instrument accepted in many music genres. Magnante's father was a well-known amateur musician and performed at Italian wedding receptions and other dance venues. Charles sang along with his father beginning at the age of five years and at the age of seven, he secretly learned to play his father's accordion. At the age of sixteen his reputation as an accordionist had grown so much he was receiving many offers to join tours with stage bands, which he declined due to his continuing musical studies.

Charles Magnante started his professional career playing in Italian restaurants and on the Staten Island Ferry. However, he wanted to break free from the ‘O Sole Mio’ image of the stereotypical Italian-American accordionist which his audiences expected to hear. In the 1940s, he was the leader of a successful trio with guitarist Tony Mottola and organist George Wright and played regularly on NBC radio broadcasts. He worked also as a sought-after studio musician. At the peak of his career, he played 30 live radio broadcasts and eight studio sessions each week. He performed also as a solo concert musician and once performed a solo concert at the Civic Stadium of Buffalo, New York for an audience of 40,000. Magnante was one of the twelve founding members of the American Accordionists' Association (founded in 1938), and also served as this organization's president for three terms.

Magnante wrote method books for accordion players and numerous arrangements of contemporary popular standards, polkas and classical pieces. Many of his arrangements can still be found in the standard repertoire of accordionists throughout the world. His most famous original composition is probably the novelty ‘Accordiana’. His arrangements and compositions stretch across a number of musical genres, including easy listening, jazz and boogie-woogie and light classical pieces. Magnante was featured as accordion soloist on more than two dozen albums (many with studio orchestras), released by Columbia, Grand Award, Command Records, Decca Records and other record labels. The quartet members are: accordionist - Charles Magnante; guitarist - Tony Mottola; organist and pianist - George Wright and double bassist - Eugene Ettore or Bobby Haggart.

These records are from a private collection and are all of the 16” transcription type.
Sometimes called a broadcast transcription or radio transcription or nicknamed a platter, the official term was Electrical transcriptions, usually abbreviated to E.T. among radio professionals. These records were sent out to various radio stations on a subscription basis and were never meant to be sold but luckily a lot of them survived. A lot of these selections are available on commercial labels but the ones that are not are very rare. Some of these labels are: APS (Associated Program Service), WBS (World Broadcasting System) and WPS (World Program Service). Most of them have no label at all just a hand written label.